State Sen. Jesse Hamilton said a woman called 911 on him earlier this month as he canvassed in his own district.
State Sen. Jesse Hamilton, a Democrat who represents the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville, Crown Heights and Flatbush, said he’d been speaking with voters in his district earlier this month when an unidentified woman called the cops on him for no apparent reason.
“I support Trump, and I see the difference between Democrat and Republican — and I see the difference between you and Trump,” the woman said in an exchange captured on camera. She then lambasted Hamilton for giving out pamphlets about “fighting back” against Trump.
The lawmaker says the woman then called 911, prompting police to arrive at the scene. The cops “patiently explained to the woman that Hamilton had done nothing illegal,”
Hamilton, who is up for re-election this year, held a press conference about a week later at the same spot where he’d encountered the woman and announced his intention to introduce a bill that would criminalize 911 calls against people of color when there’s zero evidence of any wrongdoing.
“That’s gonna be a hate crime,” Hamilton told The Prospect Heights Patch. “This pattern of calling the police on black people going about their business and participating in the life of our country has to stop.”
Hamilton said the legislation is needed to ensure that people who make racially motivated 911 calls are duly penalized.
“Living while black is not a crime. But making a false report, especially motivated by hate, should be. Our laws should recognize that false reports with hateful intent can have deadly consequences,” he told The Daily Eagle.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b0a5b1febc2632